WWI Air Wargaming
in Miniature
Part II

Modeling and Painting the Miniatures

Italy: colors and markings

by Bill Rutherford

Colors

Aircraft appeared in natural finish throughout most of the war, with clear-doped fabric surfaces and varnished wood surfaces and struts. Note that the Italian varnishes applied to the linen surfaces darkened the surface considerably, so use one of the darker doped-linen colors from the chart (though one could get away with using any of them…) Metal surfaces appear to have been clear-varnished or painted various grays, the exact color depending on the aircraft manufacturer.

Nieuport 11s and Hanroit HD1s, both produced by Nieuport-Macchi, sometimes arrived in clear-doped finishes but more often arrived in the aluminum-doped finish. A number of Nieuports also served in khaki upper and clear-doped lower surfaces, with struts painted khaki. These had either khaki or clear-varnished metal surfaces and cowls.

In the summer of 1918, a two-tone camouflage scheme began to appear, with green and brown brushed in a rough mottle or dapple over the clear-doped base. Inter-plane struts appear to have been left in varnished wood finish, painted black, or even aluminum doped (if that color appeared elsewhere on the plane).

Markings

Usual practice was to use an aircraft's under surface as a large tricolor. The outboard undersides of both left wings were colored red, the right, green, and the center, clear-doped (illustration E). An alternate was to apply roundels (illustration A) in six positions (upper top wing, lower bottom wing, fuselage sides), in red, white, and green, with either nonwhite color in the center. The rudder was normally tricolored, with green in front and red at rudder's edge. Tricolors appeared in other locations as well, such as on imported Nieuport 11s, which sometimes had the engine cowling painted with the left third of the cowl red, the center third, white, and the right third, green.

Serial numbers, when carried, were normally black and appeared on the rear fuselage or on the rudder. Personal markings, as with most other combatants, weren't the rule, but did appear on fuselage and rudder sides.

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